Farmola

We spent the next two day sprinting east, the accelerator pedal mashed into the floorboard. On April 6th, we reached the outskirts of Nashville as snowflakes were falling. I followed the parade onto the exit ramp, and when I took my foot off the gas pedal and pressed in the clutch to slow for the stop light, the engine’s revs stayed at the maximum allowed by the governor. I looked over at Rudolph with what must have been huge eyes.

“What the fuck! I can’t slow the engine down!” I stabbed at the pedal over and over, thinking there must be a catch in the linkage. Meanwhile, the buses were pulling away from me, headed I knew not where.

“Choke it,” Rudolph suggested. “Pull out the choke just enough to cut the revs.”

I pulled the choke knob out and sure enough the engine did just that - it choked to a halt.

“Not so much. Just feather it a little.”

I cranked the engine over and it roared back to life. Then, pulling gently on the choke knob, it slowed, sputtering. As I let out the clutch, I pushed the gas pedal and pushed in the choke. We pulled out across the intersection and caught up with the bus ahead of us. All across town, I practiced the weird maneuver as the early spring snow began to accumulate on the street.

“This is fuckin’ crazy,” I mumbled with every challenging intersection or slowdown. Eventually, we emerged from the city streets and headed out a road into the country. It was just us buses and vans on the road as we climbed a hill and arrived at a campground where each vehicle or two could fit into a parking slot with its own picnic table. This was Old Hickory Lake campground, our temporary parking place. Shutting down the engine was a huge relief after an hour of fearing catastrophe.

Over the next few days I borrowed tools, asked for advice - of which there was little among the Caravan members - and experimented with removing, repairing and rebuilding Shades of Blue’s carburetor. All those hours of maximum pressure on the accelerator had served to bend part of the linkage within the carburetor body. With pliers and a ball peen hammer I removed and reshaped the warped component and replaced the carb. Meanwhile, we’d become a major tourist attraction.

Word had gotten out about the hundreds of hippies that had arrived from California to buy land for a commune. On our second day in the campground, a Sunday, we looked out from our hilltop perch at a line of traffic stretching solid for as far as we could see down the road from Nashville. They drove by us, through the campground, at the pace of a funeral procession, ogling us, with our hair, our bell bottom jeans, our granny dresses and our colorful vehicles. We were the gypsies come to town, an unimaginable circus of unlikely transplants parked just over yonder from the Grand Ol’ Opry, the heartland of country music.

The easy access of the public to our living situation must have worried some authorities - we were, after all, sitting ducks for any locals hoping to run us out of the state by any means possible - and so after several days at Old Hickory, we moved to a campground on the shores of Percy Priest Lake, a more sheltered and private location where rangers could control the amount of traffic allowed to visit us.

A couple of the four marriage buses set out to explore potential land deals in Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. The rest of us took the opportunity to hang out and get to know one another better. Rudolph and Kristin left Shades of Blue to move into new bus families made up of single folks, leaving Anita and I and the girls to live as something more like a family. But not for long.

For the first time since I’d joined the group, Anita and I decided it was time to introduce ourselves to Stephen. He’d met Anita, but had never really met me, nor us as a couple, which by then we’d decided that were were. We knocked on his bus door one morning and Michael let us in. The interior of the bus seemed to glow with its walls covered by glued-on oriental carpeting, its bed platforms covered with prints from India. I had the feeling I’d entered something between a Bedouin chief’s tent and a throne room. Stephen and Ina May sat together on one platform, Margaret was standing at the stove, Michael sat in the driver’s seat as we took our own seats on a small bench near the front.

I told my story of having read his book, caught up with the Caravan and decided to stay with both Anita and the community. He asked me some questions that seemed relatively trivial, though not what I’d call small talk. I noticed that they, too, had two young girls on their bus - Dana and Martha - both sitting in the upper bunk in the loft at the rear of the bus. As heavy as it was - I was totally cognizant that this family had lost a newborn infant only the week before - I was feeling pretty confident that I was passing the test, whatever that meant. But then Stephen got to the crux of the matter.

“Well, you may be wearing the pretty purple pants, but Anita’s the one really manifesting the bus. You ain’t done shit yet, but you got hope. I think you got it in you to manifest that bus no matter what you’re wearing.”

I looked down and sure enough, I was wearing the gaudy purple bells I’d bought the previous year as part of my getting outfitted as a hippie. In leaving my rebel political persona behind, I’d dumped the military surplus fashion and headed to the extremes of what I imagined the Summer of Love people were wearing. My first thought was, “This is the last time I wear these pants,” but then tried to understand what Stephen was telling me. Before I could come up with a reply, he was dismissing us from our audience with him. They had other stuff happening and, “We’ll see you around.” I had work to do. I knew I’d better get learning what it was, probably from people who’d been Stephen’s students for a while.

Soon after, we made the acquaintance of a couple of Haight Ashbury veterans I’ll call Lester and Joanna and almost instantly made friends with them. Lester impressed us as being a very knowledgeable student of Stephen, who seemed to have internalized not only the teachings, but also the language that we recognized from the book. He was glib, funny and engaging. Joanna was much more quiet, but clearly very smart. They were both good with the girls and we spent time walking with them around the campground, chattering away.

“I can get us some peyote. You into drinking tea with us tonight?” Lester asked. I had only good memories of my two experiences with the sacred cactus. I looked at Anita. She nodded with what I thought was some enthusiasm.

That night, by the light of our kerosene lantern we each downed a good half a cup of tea and waited for it to come on. It was my first nighttime experience with it and the visuals steadily become more intense until our individual boundaries began to melt away. We’d only been friends for a couple of days, but it felt as if we’d know one another forever. We were part of the same family. No, we were the same people. I was one with the other three and they all with me. Lester’s voice seem to penetrate my brain, my heart, my gut as he described our psychedelic unity in terms of a spiritual bond, a joining of souls….a marriage. It was incontestable. We had, indeed, gone beyond the definitions of individuality and reached the place that Stephen had described in Monday Night Class - the place where he and Margaret had to cop to Michael and Ina May that something had happened that caused them to agree to stay together to commemorate it.

To say that my mind was blown would be the understatement of the century. And to describe that night here in any more detail would be to devalue it and betray a sacred trust. But the next morning, charged with the energy of that night, we took a stroll around the campground in an entirely new world. We dropped in on our “old” friends in the New Hampshire bus - the first four marriage acquaintances Anita and I had made on the Caravan.

Daniel and Allan had their heads under the hood of the bus, which had been refusing to start since the day before when they attempted to drive into town for supplies. All the previous afternoon they’d tinkered with it - both of them were electrical engineers, with good understanding of the material plane. We were invited to come inside and the ladies immediately caught on that something had happened among us.

“Noooo…. you didn’t! Did you?” Fanny’s mouth dropped open. Allan stepped into the bus and sat in the driver’s seat to try starting the bus again.

“Allan,” Fanny said, “These guys married each other last night.”

Allan turned the key. The engine roared to life. Maylee looked like she’d just witnessed a miracle.

“Man, you guys are packin’ some juice!”

And we four became even more convinced that we’d progressed to a level of consciousness that explained why the four marriages led the Caravan. There was something to it, some power gained by taking the leap. It was not ours to question, but to fulfill this new cosmic promise. Then I thought - though just for an instant - How will I ever explain this to my parents?

Lester and Joanna gave up their bus - it was a nice medium-length bus - to another couple and moved their meager possessions in with us. The next day, we were back on the road. There were two prospects for land we had to check out - one in Kentucky and one in Arkansas. And what better way to assess them than to take the entire Caravan.

It was a one-day drive to the Kentucky land, where we were allowed to park for the night and take unstructured tours. I tagged along with a group that roamed through meadowns and woodlots for hours. It looked nice enough; I was hardly qualified to judge its quality for farming or ability to fit all of us, since we numbered nearly 300 and I expected we’d be growing once the people who’d left after us caught up.

On returning to the bus I noticed that my big duffle bag was sitting on the bed, and was only half full of the clothes I’d brought from back east.

“Anybody know what happened to my stuff?”

“I buried your leather.” It was Lester.

“You what???”

“You know we ain’t into animal products. It’s animal skin. I buried it. The boots, the fancy fringe vest, the belts. If you’re living with us, you’re never gonna wear that shit.”

“But you can’t just take my stuff and bury without talking to me first.”

“I didn’t want to get in a hassle with you about it. We all agreed that the best thing to do would be to get it over with and put it where it belongs - where you’d put any dead animal - in the ground.”

I looked at Joanna and Anita. They could barely look back, but didn’t contest what Lester had said.

“Great. Well, I guess I’m pissed and that’s not straight. And I’m sure no one’s gonna stick up for me here, so I’m going out for a walk.”

It took me a good hour to come to terms with it. So maybe I would have mailed my leather stuff back to my brother to sell, but where was the karma at for that? If I’m no longer into animal products, I’m not into empowering other people to use them or eat them either. It was a hard reckoning, but Lester was right. Either I was into these agreements or I wasn’t. I was wearing my Chucks - my canvas basketball sneakers - and those were the only non-leather shoes I had. I wasn’t about to wear stuff made out of hide. And I wasn’t thinking of leaving, so the decision was made. I went back to Shades of Blue and got straight with the family.

The next day at the drivers’ meeting, Stephen explained that our showing up as interested buyers had brought the owner’s family out of the woodwork and ignited a major feud about the ownership rights of the land and who could legitimately sell it to people such as ourselves. The uptight would have tainted any deal we could have made, so we instantly became disinterested and promised to leave the next day. We were off to the middle of Arkansas where another parcel was available.

On the ride down, it became obvious that the euphoria of our four-way communion was wearing off. The power differential between Lester and I was starting to rub me the wrong way. He had a lot of self-confidence, but seemed conservative at times. Anita was definitely not liking my showing affection for Joanna. And she was having a hard time feeling or showing affection for Lester. I was trying to rationalize it, thinking that we were just dealng with the flaws in our openness that showed why the commitment was really the best thing for us, as far as being spiritual students was concerned. Our problems stemmed from ego. We just had to work harder on suppressing those ugly, selfish thoughts.

By the time we parked on the Arkansas land, all four of us were ready for the loony bin. Something had snapped. Anita had gone into a shell. Joanna and I were the only twosome able to converse, but all we could talk about were the problems of the other two. We insisted that we should all four go visit one of the established four-marriages to get advice. Surely, this - like marital problems experienced by regular two-marriages - was a typical stage of getting used to the new configuration. We expected one of these original San Francisco four-marriages to chuckle appreciatively and say, “Oh, THAT one. You’ll grow out of it.” But that’s not what they said. In fact, it seemed more like what we brought to them only served to raise the grain on the problems they were also having. I got the impression that we were making them feel trippier rather than them making us feel less trippy.

It was hot, humid and infested by mosquitoes in that place. We were mentally miserable and grateful to hear that we’d rejected that land. But getting back on the road toward Nashville with our heads so screwed up was a journey into Hell. Time seemed to stand still and the word had gone around that we were headed for yet another possible land deal, or at least a piece of land where we might be able to stay a while - a more private scene than the parks around Nashville’s major recreation areas.

The vibes were - as Stephen would have put it and Lester did - curdled. Obviously this wasn’t working out, but it was impossible to change the living arrangement with the Caravan on the road. The hours and miles crept by. Anita wouldn’t talk to anyone. Kristina and Janine were wondering what had happened to their mom, and I’d lost all of her trust by acting as if she was the main problem. But we were supposed to by psychic yogis, weren’t we? Wasn’t this the kind of work the spiritual path demanded of us? To overcome petty emotions like jealousy and open ourselves up completely to one another? Or was this all bullshit?

After what e like an interminable drive, the Caravan headed down a straight unpaved road between open farm fields. All of the buses pulled over and parked once we reached a long wooded stretch to our right. Apparently, this was the place. Lester and I got off the bus and joined a large group of the Caravan’s men who were being met by a local sheriff and a wiry old guy who looked none to happy to see us there. Stephen was doing the talking, and one of the four-marriage guys was telling us that a member of the family that owned this 600-acre lot had met one of us in Nashville and invited us to stay temporarily on the land while we looked for a place to buy. The problem was, there were no roads through the property and we would have to cut our own through the woods.

I walked back the bus. Joanna was nowhere in sight, but Anita was in the driver’s seat.

“I’m leaving. I’m taking the girls back to Maryland.”

“What? Why would you want to do that? We haven’t even tried to work this shit out yet.”

“It isn’t gonna work out. I’m leaving.”

“Well you can’t just take off with all our stuff in the bus.”

“Then I’m leaving the bus.” And she bolted out the door, walked through the high weeds, climbed over a barbed wire fence and disappeared into the woods.

We’d arrived at the Martin Farm. And as it would turn out, the Caravan was over.

There’s nothing subtle about a procession of 60 buses and vans full of longhairs, and as much as we reveled in the attention of other motorists, we understood the attention given to us by the state police as we moved across borders and traversed their domains. We were watched by the state boys, by county cops and by sheriffs and their deputies just to make sure there was no monkey business. After the seizure of our contraband in Panther Flat I wondered if the word was passed on from one jurisdiction to the next that we were clean - or at least had been cleaned out.

And so, as we left Wyoming and entered Nebraska we were met by several troopers who led us along US 80 to a large rest stop. This had become the accustomed treatment during the first circuit of the Caravan, where one state’s authorities would call ahead to the next destination state’s authorities, advising them of the approach of a passel of hippies needing a place to park a passel of of buses for a night. At times whole rest areas would be reserved in advance to guard against the situation of a wandering Caravan suddenly dropping in to a shopping center parking lot out of desperation and sending waves of panic through the local populace.

At the next morning’s driver’s meeting I was, for the first time, recognized and addressed in honor of my having cleaned up the Shades of Blue’s paint job. William (of the John and William four marriage) laughingly congratulated me for having cured the “spray paint astral” I’d inflicted on our bus. I appreciated the friendly attention.

We all knew that Ina May - one of Stephen’s wives in his four marriage - was expecting a baby. The due date would come sometime after our arrival in Tennessee and people were curious to see who would deliver since Ina May had been the midwife for a couple of babies born on the Caravan. But on our second day driving across Nebraska, we pulled off suprisingly early in North Platte, parking in a large lot in the early afternoon. Word got around that Ina May had gone into labor. Anita was worried; it was way too early.

The next morning there was no routine drivers’ meeting. Instead, Gerald (of Peter-and-) knocked on the door of our bus and somberly informed us that Ina May’s baby had been stillborn and would be buried there in North Platte after all the legal requirements had been taken care of. The Caravan would stay put until after that, then would beeline south into Kansas.

We were stunned. Somehow, the good karma of Stephen’s family and the Caravan seemed to have failed. I realized how little I really understood about the magic held by the group - I’d naively believed there was such magic and that it protected us from this kind of thing. The death of a newborn was so far beyond my experience and comprehension that I half expected the Caravan to disband or at least regroup somehow. But as we gathered with others who had been with Stephen since the early days of Monday Night Class, we got more grounded perspectives.

This was simply the way life was. Death was a certainty for all of us. It came way early for Ina May’s child, but it wasn’t an issue of fairness or deserving or bad magic. It just was. Grief was part of life and we would move on. If anyone would understood this, it would be Stephen’s family. We shouldn’t allow ourselves slip too far out into sadness for the loss of one infant because there was so much life still left in the rest of us. Our lesson should be to love and support one another even more, especially the few children who were travelling with us.

We hugged Anita’s two little girls, did the small chores required to maintain our rolling homes and waited for the return of our lead bus.

Hours later, the white bus returned and passed by the lot, honking its horn to alert us that it was time to stow and go. We were headed east again.

In the repair work done to Stephen’s bus in Rawlins, his old differential had been replaced with a two-speed overdrive unit, giving it another higher speed gear. So where Shades of Blue had, up to that point, had an easy time keeping up, we found ourselves having to literally “put the pedal to the metal” just to keep pace with a faster Caravan. During this day’s run, Rudolph, Anita and I found our legs cramping up from pushing so hard against the accelerator.

And a long day’s run it turned out to be.

We crossed the state line and found not two or three police cars, but a mob of them that, with their roof lights flashing, took the lead and following positions immediately. Were we supposed to feel honored? Was this the equivalent of a fireboats blasting high pressure fountains into the air when a famous ship entered the harbor? Had they heard about our tragedy and decided to grant us a special escort to our next rest stop?

The first indication that this was something other than a positive treatment came as we noticed that patrol cars were blocking the exit ramps from the freeway as we passed them. Not that we meant to pull off the highway, but we weren’t being given the option. Something was fishy. With Anita at the wheel, I fished my duffel bag out from under the bed platform and dug out the transistor radio I’d brought with me from Maryland. I hadn’t turned it on since I’d arrived in California - the agreement on the Caravan was that we weren’t into listening to contemporary music. Something about it having become too commercial and sold out. But there was something going on and, as Dylan said, “you don’t know what it is.”

I clicked it on, hoping the batteries were still good. I tuned around the AM dial looking for news. Eventually we heard a traffic report mentioning “a convoy of buses” that was being “escorted” across the state by the police. No details were available. This would not have been surprising were it not for the fact that it had never happened before.

As we neared Wichita - the only big city on our Kansas passage - a car pulled alongside us in the high speed lane. It had the call letters and logo of a TV or radio station on its door. A man in the passenger seat rolled down his letter and gestured to us, indicating that he wanted to talk. I was sitting behind Anita in what we called the “shakti seat,” and slid down the window. The reporter and I began talking simultaneously.

Me: “Can you tell us why we’re getting this escort?”

Him: “Who are you people?”

I told him - yelling above the wind noise - “We’re headed for Tennessee to buy some land and settle down.”

He told me, “We don’t know for sure, but there’s some suspicion that you’re headed for the big anti-war march in Washington, and bent on making trouble.”

“We’re pacifists. We’re not political. We just want to start a community.”

Having taken part in some of the biggest marches in D.C., I was aware that there were plans for the biggest mobilization yet coming up in April.

I asked him, “Can you tell them that we’re not the people they think we are?”

He replied, “We can’t get through to the governor’s office. They’re not telling us much.”

I figured that was that. I slammed the window shut. It was fucking freezing out there.

Rudolph added some perspective. “This is the Universe telling us to ride it on out after Ina May losing her baby. We need to keep rolling and get to Tennessee.”

We all nodded in agreement. This is the way it was.

Near dusk we crossed the state line into Oklahoma where the police hand-off took place. We stopped briefly and we suspected that Stephen was making it clear that we were not who the Kansas governor suspected we were. Soon after, we parked along the highway in open country.

Kristin ran to the back of the bus, grabbed something, and headed out the door.

“I’m gonna donate some vegetation to this barren land,” she yelled back over her shoulder. We were down to stems and seeds, and she didn’t want our seeds to go wasted. It was a small but significant reason to celebrate after a heavy day.

Though several of the buses needed to remain parked in downtown Rawlins waiting for parts, the rest of us were free to find our own spots to wait out the repairs, at least to Stephen’s bus. Given that all of the disabled buses were 15 to 30 years old, finding replacement gearboxes and differentials would take some time.

We drove a few miles beyond Rawlins, giving up some elevation in favor of warmer weather, and found a nice deserted park near the North Platte River, close enough to the highway that we’d be sure to notice when the Caravan drove by. I’d bought a roll of masking tape to lay out a straight edge along the fuzzy trim job that I’d painted on the bus. With nothing else to do for a while, we spent time entertaining the girls, laundering and airing out the blankets, sleeping bags and sheets and learning more about one another.

Over the several weeks of this leg of the Caravan we’d gotten to know a few other four marriages, all identified paternalistically. Besides Peter and Gerald there was John and William, Peter and Thomas, David and Richard, Phillip and Warren, Richard and Michael. We’d also become familiar with most of the named buses, some of them called by the town where the bus had been bought and some by a feature of the bus itself. There was the Stockton Bus, the Santa Rosa Bus and the Manteca Bus. Then there were the Screen Door Bus, the Loft Bus and the Raised Roof Bus. Mixed in with the full sized buses were a few shorty buses, bread trucks, delivery vans, VW microbuses and one creative thing called the Cadillac Camper, which fused a cab-over camper meant to sit in the bed of a pickup truck with the front end of a late-50s Cadillac.

Shades of Blue was a relatively new and well maintained bus with a strong engine that allowed it to pull uphill grades faster than most of the others. It was fast enough that it almost got me in trouble as I pulled into the passing lane on a long climb and began advancing beyond the magic place in line beyond which only Stephen and the four marriage buses were supposed to be. Rudolph calmly called the near faux pas to my attention and I took my foot off the gas until I could pull back into line at a proper place.

If you were heavy enough to be in a four marriage, you were demonstrating what Rudolph referred to as “thunder yogi” commitment. It was one thing to suppress your own ego. It was a higher commitment to marry someone and give over to that person. But to make a marital commitment between two couples represented a level of surrender that earned you at least a position near the front of the Caravan. I suspected that it also gained you a certain level of trust with Stephen since you were following his example. Rudolph had been around Stephen longer than the rest of us, but he couldn’t explain the phenomenon of four marriage.

But we could talk about some of the principles that Stephen taught and how they applied to real life, because that’s what it was all about. In essence, what I’d joined was a community that believed in telepathy, or at least a community that assumed that it was telepathic. And by that, I understood that Stephen taught a combination of spiritual stuff and advanced physics, which together defined individual humans as electrical beings generating fields that intermingled. When we referred to vibrations, which we did quite frequently, we were talking about our sensitivity to those electrical fields. Bad vibes, good vibes - you didn’t have to say anything to pick up on them.

But words, too, carried more than their literal meaning. Truth - absolute truth - was supposed to be our only medium of verbal exchange. Lies became all too visible in Caravan conversation. All those little white lies that I’d become accustomed to telling because, well, everyone else relied on them, too - they didn’t pass the test on the Caravan. This made me uncomfortable sometimes, when visiting veteran Stephen students on other buses. I’d have to adjust what they called “my zero” to be meticulously honest about my feelings, my history, my attitudes. It wasn’t so nervewracking on Shades of Blue where Kristin was pretty loose about things and Rudolph was naturally gentle about telling me that I was not being entirely truthful “on the subtle plane.” But some people - especially, I noticed, some of the single males from the bus families - would call me on stuff I wasn’t even aware I was doing.

It reminded me of my first day on the Caravan when I’d been busted for sarcasm. My attempts to bring humor and levity to conversations almost always resulted in remarks about “subtle plane anger” or uptight or “clenching up the vibes.” And becoming more self conscious didn’t make things any better. Then I’d be called on “looking in my rear view mirror” or being “self-other.” With experience, I became more familiar with the players and which ones were considered to be the “astral conservatives” in the community. I gravitated toward the “astral liberals” who - it was said - tended to also be the more “material plan conservative” members. There was a lot to figure out in those rare minutes when we’d get to hang out with people during our overnights. The extended stay in the cottonwoods by the river let me tap Rudolph’s mind about the social dynamics. It had been less than a year since I’d earned my bachelor’s in psychology, but I could not, for the life of me, map Stephen’s social system with the theory and practice of my education.

“You’ve got to get into Buddhism,” Rudolph suggested. “Stephen’s into Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the Zen Center in San Francisco. I think he cops to him as his teacher and a lot of what he talks about comes out of that. You gotta dump your ego to understand it. If you do, you won’t care so much what people tell you and you’ll probably not care so much what you say. It won’t matter so much, so your ego won’t feel like it has to lie or cover up shit.”

I’d never felt like I had that much of an ego. My friends and I were all about self-effacement - making light of our own personalities and presumptions. Was I supposed to think even less of myself? Was I supposed to not have a viewpoint?

“Suzuki says you should just sit. That’s the Zen way. You’re probably thinking too much about it. I’d just cut loose and read your mail.”

Read my mail?

“Yeah. Pay attention to what other people and the Universe are telling you. That’s your mail.”

One morning - we’d lost track of what day it was - Krissy called out, “The Caravan! There goes the Caravan!” Through the trees we glimpsed the signature white shape of Stephen’s bus rushing by with its trailing kaleidoscope of colored blurs. We packed swiftly, checked the oil and fluids under the hood, checked the air in the tires, then pulled onto the pavement with the accelerator pushed to the floor. The govenor didn’t let us go faster than 55, but we had the speedometer pegged there for over an hour before we caught up with the slowest bus in line.

The matter was settled. Stephen was free to rejoin us and head Caravan Part II to Tennessee. A considerable amount of boo had been collected by the local sherriff’s department, but no one had been arrested or charged. We’d earned enough from the azalea gig to pay for our gas and then some. At about 20 cents per gallon, getting a little under 10 miles to the gallon and with a couple thousand miles to drive, we were cool and able to help other buses with their fuel buys.

We drove all day to reach Clear Lake where another dozen or so buses and vans would join us. For the first time I could see the entire caravan in a line. It was damn impressive. But looking at Shades of Blue, I felt there was something missing in its paint job, so I decided I’d embelish it with a narrow strip of white trim long the bottom edge of its body and around the wheel wells. With its white roof, that would make a handsome frame for the three broad bands of blue.

The next morning we drove over another range of low coastal mountains, hit U.S. Route 5 south and then turned east on Route 80. We overnighted at Donner Pass, the high point of the Sierra crossing. It being March, there was still plenty of snow and we piled on the sleeping bags and blankets for a cold night. Stephen didn’t come through banging on our bumpers the next morning. There wasn’t a driver’s meeting. It was understood that the first order of business was to start the engines and get the heaters working. We cooked breakfast on the road, with all of us huddled in the front of the bus within range of the hot air.

The practice of caravaning continued to be one of “stoning the squares” by smiling and waving at every car that passed us heading west. The reactions were so great that we never tired of hamming it up. The Caravan was not merely to get us to a destination; it had a purpose of its own. We’d wonder about the conversations it would stimulate as people described their experience to friends and families. “I swear, Gladys, there was A HUNRED of ‘em. All full o’ these grinning hippies!”

For us - without music playing - the road and our mutual company were our entertainment. For me - never having been to California, Nevada or Utah - it was a mindblowing travelogue, a feast for the eyes.

In Nevada at a gas stop I picked up a can of white spray paint. The next day at our overnight stop I sprayed the narrow strip of white all along the lower border of the bus’s body. From a distance, it looked like an improvement. But the fuzzy boundary of the spray pattern - along with the unsteadiness that came with my hurry to get the job done without others noticing and commenting on it - resulted in, well, not the most professional looking job.

We’d stocked up pretty well on bulk foods back in San Francisco, but things ran out and the occasional shopping trip needed to be made. We didn’t want to take the entire caravan through towns to find the supermarket, so one bus might be assigned shopping duty to bring back food staples, paper towels, toilet paper and other basics to be distributed at the next drivers’ meeting. But other sanitation issues needed to be dealt with by each and every vehicle, and by this I’m referring to dumping our shit.

There may have been a bus or two with a holding tank or some other more sophisticated method of collecting the products of human alimentary elimination, but Shades of Blue and all the buses I knew of used the simple, though primitive, technology of the pickle bucket - a five-gallon plastic container with a snap-on lid that could be obtained for free from just about any burger joint. A toilet seat might have been secured from a salvage yard or hardware store. Depending on how many people were using it, the bucket - affectionately called “the shitter” - filled every couple of days.

Fortunately, though, every day the Caravan had to make a fuel stop - an operation that might take two hours and would usually boggle the mind of the service station attendants enough that they didn’t notice the line of longhairs carrying buckets toward their restrooms. Yes, once in a while we caused toilet malfunctions, but somehow we always managed to unload enough to keep our onboard services available.

On our seventh night after leaving Panther Flat, we stopped in a roadside parking area on the high Wyoming plateau some miles east of Rock Springs. We’d been noticing how cold it was all day and wondered how cold it might get during the night. We brought out everything we could find to pile under and on top of us and wore several layers of clothes as we settled in for a long night. Someone from another bus told us that someone in yet another bus reported their thermometer telling them it was 15 degrees before sundown.

The next morning, as we’d expected, it was fucking cold. A thick coating of ice covered the entire inside of the bus, including the windows. It was painful to get out from under the warm pile and scamper to the driver’s seat to start the engine. But the engine wouldn’t even turn over. I could only hope there was enough anti-freeze in the radiator, because I never would have guessed we’d see such cold temperatures.

“Someone’s gonna have to chip the ice of the windshield ’cause we’re gonna need to get pushed to get the engine started. I’m going out to get some help.” I added a sweater and my warmest coat from back east to the shirts, jeans and sneakers I already had on. I stepped out into a stiff wind that was so cold that my first breath seared my lungs and nasal passages. It was ungodly cold. My fingers went from shock to pain to numb to useless in the space of a minute. I wasn’t the only one. Guys were emerging from buses up and down the line, and all of them looked like I felt, standing in shock and probably wondering how and when they’d be able to get their engines to turn over.

Suddenly and spontaneously, we all found ourselves heading for a central spot for a meeting in the deep freeze. A guy named William from one of the four marriage buses spoke.

“I guess a lot of us are frozen here. A couple o’ buses have been able to start up, but I think we’re gonna need for us monkeys to push a few and see if they can get going that way. So let’s all of us start up front with Stephen’s bus, then work back through the line.”

Huffing and puffing, slapping our hands together, desperately trying to overcome the cold, we marched as a gang to the white bus with the narrow red and blue horizontal stripes around its middle. Twenty of us put our shoulders against frigid steel and dug in our feet. William signaled the driver - either Stephen or Michael - to release the brake, put it in gear and hold down the clutch pedal. The terrain was flat and level - there was no slope - and we could only get the bus going so fast before the driver engaged the clutch. The bus jerked to a halt. We tried again. And again. No go.

So it was back to the second bus, Peter and Gerald’s - at least that’s how it was called. It was actually Peter and Kay Marie and Gerald and Priscilla’s bus - another of the four marriages and - significantly, I thought - always in the second position in the Caravan. It, too, had a well-built loft added to the rear quarter of the bus. Now a little warmed up on the inside, though inviting frostbite on the outside, we heaved into the bus and got it moving. The driver popped the clutch and the engine caught, reluctantly at first, but then roaring to life.

“Take it easy!” yelled a guy named Jose. “Let it warm up before you gun it like dat!”

We tried a few more buses with mixed results, then agreed to go inside and warm up, however that was going to happen for those of us in non-running vehicles. But I managed to recruit five guys from buses near ours to go in on a “co-op” deal. Out of that deal, our bus and three others started up.

An idea went around that the running buses would push the buses that monkey power hadn’t been able to start. If the problem was not reaching a high enough speed, this would be the solution. It made sense.

The first beneficiary of the idea would be Stephen’s bus, with Peter and Gerald’s blue and yellow bus doing the honors. Shades of Blue had pulled into a position where we could watch the operation while our interior, almost imperceptibly, warmed up.

Creeping up ever so carefully, the blue and yellow bus made gentle contact, bumper-top-bumper, with the white bus. Then, accelerating slowly, the coupled buses reached 5, 10, 15, 20 miles per hour - much faster than we humans had been able to reach. The blue and yellow bus slowed to separate from the white bus, which then, quite conspicuously, popped the clutch. It appeared to suffer a massive jolt, then jerkily came to a halt. It hadn’t looked good. Rudolph and I looked at each other with “oh shit” expressions.

“Something broke. Maybe the transmission.” Rudolph knew about such things. He’d grown up around farming equipment, tractors, trucks and all.

Stephen got out of the white bus, bent over and looked underneath. He walked around to the other side. Michael got out. He looked around underneath, too. Other people from the blue and yellow bus and other buses did their own examinations. There was a short meeting in the cold. Some guys ran off, apparently to get something. Rudolph went to ask if they needed help. He was back in a minute.

“They blew their rear end. It was so frozen that when they put it in gear, it just busted.” It amused him just a little a bit. “So Peter and Gerald are gonna have to tow Stephen’s bus to the next town, Rawlins. About 20 miles ahead.”

As it turned out, Stephen’s was not the only bus to break something that morning. Several other buses needed to be towed to Rawlins. The Caravan would be based in Rawlins for over a week, with some of its buses stuck there for much longer. Nobody applied wind chill factors in those days, and it was damn windy, but the guy on the bus with the thermometer told me it was minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit when he got up that morning.

It was still dark when we pulled into a large gravel parking lot overlooking the Pacific. Below us I could make out the skeletal ruins of what I’d later learn were the old Sutro Baths, where San Franciscans had once gone to swim in ocean water tamed to fill large indoor pools. Many other buses had already arrived and continued to lumber into the lot as we followed a stream of people walking across the road and into a park. Dozens of people were standing silently in a group, all facing east. We joined them and soon the crowd had doubled in size.

Slowly, as we watched, the sky brightened and the faces in the crowd became recognizable. In my brief exposure to the Caravan and the class at the Family Dog I’d had some of the regulars pointed out to me. But the regimen that morning was not to look around, but to look straight ahead. This was a group meditation. Eventually the glow of the rising sun yielded to a flash of brightness piercing through the fronds of a palm tree. Stephen raised his ram’s horn and blew as the group took up the OM chant - a long, many-breaths-worth drone that pulsated in waves. I began chanting myself and found that it reverberated even stronger with my own voice. When it finally tailed off, I was in a different state of consciousness.

Stephen stepped up on a tree stump, turning to speak to us. He described it as the beginning of a great and heroic task. We were going to drive north, not east, at first. We’d be in northern California for maybe two weeks while he made a court appearance and resolved some charges from the original Caravan’s entry in to Oregon. Once that was done, we’d drive south again, hit U.S. Route 80, cross the Sierras, then the Rockies and then make our way to Tennessee where we’d hunt for a suitable piece of property to buy. I was on for the trip. It all sounded good to me, though I had no idea how we’d end up buying land in Tennessee. Like, who would sell land to us?

We’d agreed not to leave immediately, to give time for people without a ride to find a bus to ride with. Anita and I had been looking forward to travelling alone, to at least get used to the idea that we were a couple rather than a couple of single folks. But we were also part of this formative community, and we had to do our part to get that community to its final destination. We accepted two people into our bus family. Rudolph was a soft-spoken guy who seemed to be about my age. He was smart, kind and had been part of the Monday Night Class scene for while. Rudolph would be our third driver. Kristin was a young girl with a lot of energy who impressed us as being helpful with a good sense of humor. Others came to the door, but we felt full with four adults and two kids. We’d consider taking on another one or two people occasionally, but only if the vibes felt good.

Then, with Stephen’s big white bus, with its cool add-on loft, in the lead, we hit the road. We wound through the northwestern corner of San Francisco, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed up Route 101, the Redwood Highway. We were a small version of the Caravan that had returned to San Francisco. Not everyone could pick up and leave again so soon. Some groups had buses that needed repair and outfitting. Some people needed time to make up their minds or settle affairs.

One of the Caravan members who’d been one of the major dealers for the group had bought some land a couple hours north of San Francisco, and it was our plan to land there to spend the first night. It was an undeveloped property, and after negotiating some narrow, unpaved roads, we slowly and carefully maneuvered our big vehicles through a gate in into a field. We had barely parked when a local sheriff’s deputy drove up.

“You folks can’t stay here.”

A small powwow ensued, including the land owner, Stephen and the deputy. It seemed that the neighbors - on witnessing the arrival of some 30 busloads of hippies - had some reservations about their camping in the vicinity. And without a permit of any sort for camping there, we had to decide if it was worth it to argue the point all night long.

So it was back on the road, slowly circling the buses to exit the narrow gate, go back down the narrow road and resume our route north on 101. We camped in a rest area that night and continued up along the coast through Mendocino, then Humboldt and finally to Del Norte county in the extreme northwest corner of the state. We headed inland from Crescent City and parked in a campground called Panther Flat, next to the Smith River, the most gorgeous run of water I’d ever seen.

It was late January, the midst of the rainy season in the rainiest part of California. A mountain road led from the campground across the Oregon border to Grants Pass where the legal negotiations would take place. On our second day in Panther Flat, word went around that there was a paying job for some of us who needed to raise more gas money. We could help transport and transplant azaleas from one greenhouse location to another. The growers needed manual labor and the services of one bus whose family was willing to make it over into a big truck.

We did need gas money. Rudolph and Kristin had no cash and I was still waiting for my brother to liquidate my possessions, which amounted to a motorcycle and an electric guitar. So Rudolph and I became azalea transplanters and schleppers for a week. In the bargain, I got to meet some of the other characters in our group. The campground became a social scene where you’d spend as much time visiting other buses as you’d spend in your own, entertaining visitors.

One evening as I was alone in the bus, there was a knock on the door. I opened it and found myself facing four men wearing shiny stars on their chests.

“Pardon the intrusion, but we’d like to ask you a question.”

“Uh, yeah, OK. Go ahead and ask.”

“Are you in possession of any illegal drugs?”

My mind raced. I knew we were holding. One reason we were short on cash was that there was a half a pound of pot under the front bunk, part of a group purchase made during our last days in San Francisco. But did I have to admit it? I gulped.

“Do you have a warrant?”

Immediately their kindly expressions and tone changed.

“Sir, we can be back here with a warrant within an hour. We’re gonna search your bus; you can bet on it. So why don’t you just answer the question and, if you have drugs on you, hand them over and we’ll leave you alone.”

I could just picture the big scene if all of the buses were busted and we were all hauled off to the slammer. I reached under the bed and found the coffee can. With some regret and fear that I was blowing it, I handed it over to the deputy. “Thank you, sir. You’ve made the right decision.” And with that, he and his partners were gone.

Half an hour later, Kristin returned to the bus from visiting friends. I told her I’d turned over our stash, that I didn’t feel like I had any choice in the matter.

“Oh, that’s cool,” she said with not a hint of irony. “I stashed a few lids in my bag.”

She was such a rascal.

As Donald put it, we had made closure. It was time to drive the bus back over the mountain. Stephen would be holding a class at the Family Dog, a large hall located at Ocean Beach where the Caravan had disbanded. It wasn’t a Monday night - it was later in the week. I had to admit, I’d lost track of what day it was.

It felt good with Donald. Whatever he’d had going with Anita, he seemed content with the arrangement and he told me about his growing up in Michigan while we negotiated the tight bends of the narrow mountain road. I gawked at the redwoods and the terrain along with Krissy and Janine. Back in Maryland, I’d spent as many hours as possible roaming the local forests as a young teenager. I was licking my chops over the prospect of roaming among these gargantuan trees.

As to my future with Anita on the bus or wherever we were going to live after the bus, I was trying to figure out in my head, just what were we? We’d been intimate roommates before, but there had never been a commitment - verbal or even understood. I could look at how easily she picked up and split for the Caravan, and how casually I decided to stay behind. My deciding to join the Caravan had only partly been keyed to rejoining her. But I had to admit, I was attracted to her spunk and her impulsive nature. She’d jumped at the Caravan as an adventure. I’d stayed behind out of caution. But now, I was all into the adventure. I just didn’t want to set off alone into San Francisco. If there was going to be a continuing connection with the Caravan people, I wanted to follow that for at least a while. One week had only whetted my appetite for the spiritual, the nomadic lifestyle and what seemed to be a community with some cool ideas.

When we reached the Family Dog, the Caravan seemed to have reconstituted in the parking area. In fact, there were more buses than I’d remembered from our arrival. People milled about and for the first time I was introduced to many of them who’d gotten to know Anita and her bus between Nashville and San Francisco. We drifted in with the crowd to the ballroom where the milling continued until we, along with everyone else, sat down on the floor. The room was packed, just like the pictures in the book.

When Stephen took his seat on the raised platform, the room went silent. His voice was deep. It reminded me of the character actor, John Carradine, but had some movie cowboy flavor to it. He spoke in phrases, strongly declaring an idea, then leaving a long space of silence as the idea penetrated through the audience. I couldn’t understand half of what he said, but I was distracted by the scene itself. This was a remarkable gathering. What must this guy have done and said to bring this many people together just to listen to him?

He described many of the experiences of the Caravan and what had been learned along the way. And how the Caravan had become a community on the road, taking on new people, delivering several babies en route - with his wife acting as midwife - and with the people who had voluntarily followed him on his tour demonstrating talents and competence that had surprised him.

Then his speech took a turn. He wanted to take this rolling community and settle somewhere, putting his vision to work in a place where it would stand out and not be confused with the rest of what had grown out of the hippie scene in San Francisco. He said he wanted to settle where he could have a “loud microphone” and where people would be kind enough to allow “people like us” to move in with them. And he wanted cheap land where enough could be bought that the community would have room to grow and to have some privacy.

Then he dropped the bomb. He was headed for Tennessee. The American South. The region whose reputation, as the Caravan entered it, had caused people to ingest or otherwise dispose of all their contraband as a security measure. Aside from the cheap land (and I knew nothing of land prices beyond what my parents had paid in Maryland a decade earlier) I could not reconcile the decision in my mind. All these hippies, moving to Tennessee? The Grand Ol’ Oprey Tennessee? The Andrew Jackson Tennessee? The Smokey Mountains Tennessee? Home of Jack Daniels and Porter Wagoner?

Anita and I looked at each other with a mixture of puzzlement and amazement. This guy was bold if nothing else. I was thinkng, “Good luck, Stephen. It’s gonna be a small community.” That’s what was in my head. But the buzz going through the audience had a different feel to it. The meeting ended with Stephen announcing that the Caravan would reconstitute the upcoming Sunday at sunrise services, and would pull out immediately afterwards. He then produced a ram’s horn, blew a long blast and the crowd joined in a long single-note chant that vibrated my body to its core.

The post-class chatter was full of excitement and concern. There were the people who had no question that they’d be headed for Tennessee and there were those who felt betrayed - that they were being challenged to give up a future of living in spectacularly beautiful northern California. There were loyalty issues - to family, to plans, to established living arrangements. Give up your pad, your family, your job, your connections here in San Francisco and move to the unpredictable and alien environment of a state where not a decade before civil rights were being contested. I didn’t have any investment in California except for a sudden, deep infatuation with the land and the sea and a sense of it being liberated territory.

I’d just arrived and was deep into the changes of becoming a complete vegetarian and a bus-dwelling, pot-smoking, hair-growing, straight-getting surrogate father. Not only that, but I’d just become an “old man” with an “old lady.” It was a total immersion crash course in hippie acculturation.

I knew zip about Tennessee, but I knew that it had no ocean next to it. I assumed we’d be part of the stay-behind group. Little did I know what would develop during the next days.

For during those idle days, parked mostly on the Panhandle, we mixed it up with many of the Caravaners who were also tripping (both literally and figuratively) about the impending migration. We sat around in buses, on the ground under trees in Golden Gate Park, on the beach, on Mount Tam. The topics of our conversations followed the themes Stephen had expressed in the final Class.

The San Francisco scene was degenerating. There was nothing here to hold hippies who wanted to do something real in the world. Any news of good works and projects would be drowned out by the news of hard drugs and commercialization. Besides, it was impossible for people like us to buy enough property anywhere near San Francisco to really stretch our legs and build a village.

And as the vision of a village, built from scratch, began to implant itself in my brain, the promise of such a revolutionary project gradually displaced my personal ambition to become a Californian. My internal rebel had caused me to abandon my mainstream destiny. My nature had always had a rebellious side - suppressed by my surrounding culture and upbringing, but encouraged by certain teachers, movies, music, comic books and political heroes.

I’d long yearned, in my gut, to do something defiant and demonstrative with my life. Something that would stand out romantically and prove that good could triumph over evil. I thought I knew who and where the evil was, but I’d always felt alone in identifying the good. Now, maybe, I’d found allies for doing the good. Allies who would, no doubt, be conspicuous amidst the contrasting culture of the Deep South. It would be an audacious move, and sitting on the ground in the park, I found myself warming up to be a part of it.

“This is starting to sound good to me. How ’bout you?”

Anita’s smile told me that we would indeed be part of the Tennessee-bound leg of the Caravan.

we would indeed be part of the new Tennessee-bound Caravan.

The last stretch took the Caravan along the beachfront of San Francisco, finally parking in a large paved lot in front of the arcade that announced itself with the over-large sign saying PLAYLAND. Our arrival had been expected and there were scores of people waiting to see old friends and relatives who’d been away for three months.

The Shades of Blue family - such that it was - was breaking up. Everyone except for Donald, Anita, her kids and me had another place to go. I figured they were glad to be leaving bus life. There was no ceremony. We sat there for a while, took a walk on the beach - I took the opportunity to touch the Pacific Ocean for the first time - and then it was time to find a place to park. Donald suggested the Panhandle, an area adjoining the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, just beyond Golden Gate Park.

We were far from the only bus parked on the Panhandle, and many of our fellow bus families were not of the Caravan; bus living served the needs of the nomadic hippies that spent part of their time in the city and part in the country. There was homegrown music happening well into the night. We talked about next steps. Donald suggested we cross the bridge to the East Bay the next day to stock up on organic groceries at Erewhon, then drive back and cross the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin where he knew a place we could hang for a while and figure things out.

Just as I’d been driving up the coast road, I was enchanted by the views of San Franciso Bay. This, I thought, was a place I could fall in love with. I’d encountered some counterculture living around D.C., but the Bay Area seemed to have been taken over by it. It was like another country where I was the foreigner, with my hair and beard still too short for hippie respectability.

We loaded up on beans, flour, honey, brown rice, fresh veggies, oatmeal, incense and rolling papers, then headed for Donald’s secret encampment. The road took us into the hills of Marin County, over the shoulder of Mount Tamalpais where we stopped to sit and watch fingers of fog creeping up the ravines from the ocean, providing yet another mindboggling visual experience. Then we descended back to sea level, navigating the big bus along treacherous winding mountain road, through Stinson Beach and then along a desolate unpaved road to a bluff overlooking the ocean. It was just us in our bus out there.

“I figure we can stay out here until Monday, then we’ll go back into the city for class,” Donald said, meaning the resumption of Stephen’s weekly meetings. That night was the first time I’d ever slept in such a wilderness and as peaceful as it was, I barely slept a wink. I knew the next day would bring a reckoning.

It was time, as Donald put it, for us to “get straight.” The next morning, we toked up in preparation, to open ourselves up, to get compassionate, to get more real, to get, well, stoned.

It occured to me that I’d never “gotten straight” with anyone beyond, of course, breaking up with girlfriends. And even on those occasions, it had always been a matter of getting it over with as quickly as possible. A brief apology, a shrug of the shoulders, an awkward attempt to look sincerr, then “g’bye.” We were young, there was really nothing heavy going on for us. In fact, I thought, nothing had ever been “heavy” in my life, at least not in terms of a personal relationship. I saw myself more as one young guy out in the crazy world.

But Donald was setting up this little 3-person conversation as if it were a major decision point about life and relationship. We passed a joint around and by the time I was pinching the last roach in my fingertips, I was as high as I’d ever been. I looked at Anita and she looked back at me, direct into my eyes. We held that 2- way gaze for a minute, then I broke it off to look out the window toward the ocean.

“There’s a place,” began Donald, “where you’ve got to cop to the energy when you’re sorting it out with people, and you oughtta let that energy pass between you. If you can’t keep eye-vibing with ‘em, you’re not really being honest. If it’s gonna get heavy, you gotta come on behind it and let people see into your soul.”

Now Donald and I were eye-to-eye and I couldn’t pull my gaze away. I started to break out in a nervous sweat. So this was “heavy.” Donald breathed deep, then let it out in a long exhale, like he was blowing out a really big candle. “See?”

“Yeah.” I was wrecked. I looked back at Anita and we eye-vibed for what seemed like many minutes. Feelings started coming up inside, telling me that yes, I did care for this woman, this lady. She’d been my close friend and lover for months. She’d brought a new level of adventure and risk into my cozy but cautious life. She’d introduced me to a wildness of dreams that my other friends seemed to avoid. I really did hope to stay with her, beyond just needing a place to live in a strange place.

After a long silence, with only the wind, ocean and occasional outside voices of the girls intruding, Donald spoke again.

“You know, this has been a really high experience traveling with Anita and helping her manifest this bus. I gotta say, I’ve gotten real close to your old lady, Clifford. I could do a thing with her. But I know that before I got on Shades of Blue, you were her old man and I don’t want to split you guys up. I see how the girls like you. I know how much she wanted you to come out here.”

I felt some relief, knowing that Donald had certainly filled the role of Manifestor - a term that I’d picked up since I’d arrived. The Manifestor was the person who kept a scene together materially. Donald had maintained the bus, driven most of the miles, and served as the father figure for the bus family. He had a few years on me and even more on most of the rest of the passengers. He knew how to do stuff I knew nothing about, from mechanics to leading this meeting. He’d helped Anita and I wasn’t sure just how close they’d gotten before I arrived, but I could feel that there had been something closer than friendship.

Anita had been switching her attention from me to Donald and back again. I wasn’t sure where she was at, so I asked through the lump in my throat.

“So, do you want me to stay on the bus? I don’t have to, you know. I can find another place out here.” I didn’t believe what I was saying. “I still want to be with you. That’s why I came out.” Well, mostly, anyway.

She didn’t respond, but kept eye contact with me. I was trying to interpret what was coming through on, what? The astral plane? I tried not to let any pleading get out through my eyes.

Finally, through quivering lips, some words come through. “I think I know that I want you to stay with us, Clifford. I’d hate for Donald to leave, though. Can’t we all just stay on the bus together?”

Donald was quick to answer. “No, that’s not what I’d want. The energy would be all wrong. You guys got a connection. You got karma. And you’ve gotta work that out. Maybe sometime later, it’ll feel OK for me to be with you, but I don’t feel straight living here in this energy. So once we get back to the city, I’m gonna find another place.”

Anita’s uncertainty was all he needed to see to make up his mind, and the deal was done. Suddenly, my feelings went from relief to bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wouldn’t have to find a place to live in an alien world, but now I was faced with building a relationship in a new situation, a heavy situation. And I’d have to take on the mantle of Manifestor of the Shades of Blue.

The road snaked along the sharply carved coastline. Six of us sat arrayed like a choir behind Donald, the day’s driver, keeping vigil through the windshield. I was getting into it. We’d all dropped gelcaps full of freeze-dried peyote just after pulling onto the highway, and it had come on strong.

“Hey! Look-look-look!”

“Oh, Man! Far. Fucking. Out!”

“That is so stoned!”

Draped limply against a boulder at the outside apex of a curve, a boho hitchhiker was laughing giddily and waving to us like he couldn’t take anymore. We laughed and waved back. Ours must have been about the thirtieth busload of euphoric hippies to pass him in five minutes. We took turns describing the thoughts going through his head. How many more could there possibly be? What’s the Universe trying to tell me? Has there been a revolution and nobody told me? This has gotta be a movie.

“Yeah, man, it IS a movie! This is our movie and you’re in it!”

That struck me as particularly funny.

And it went on like that. Every motorist passed us with eyes popping - incredulous, alarmed or both. On that narrow and precipitous road, they took their very lives in their hands, gaping at the hippie parade.

I could picture cars slipping over the edge, bouncing down the cliffs, bursting in to flame. “Pay attention, people! Jesus jumpin’ up and down, Fuckin’ idiots.”

The interior went dead silent, like a speaker plug had been pulled. The engine was suddenly louder.

Oh, shit. What happened? I’d had a bad thought: we were a danger on the road. I said something, and then…

“Clifford, talking like that really curdles the vibes.”

Molly, her red hair an explosion of frizz framing a gaunt face, was staring right through me.

I looked back, contrite. My heart felt busted open by the accusation. Well, they were idiots, sort of. I mean, the danger and all.

“So, can you cop to that? I was picking up some pissed-off in there.”

I was speechless. I’d just blurted out something completely in character with who I was, and someone had called me on it.

“You know, now I think you’re just being into the juice.”

This time it was the elfish one, Henry, with his little goatee. I knew what “cop” meant, but this “juice” thing had me even more confused.

“What juice are we talkin’ about?” I asked.

“The energy, Clifford. You got all our attention by ripping it off, and now you’re not copping.”

I could feel myself taking an angry defensive posture, but the peyote seemed to prevent me from arguing. It seemed to be telling me, “It’s OK. Take it all in. Anger takes you nowhere. Just cool it.”

“OK, sorry. I didn’t mean to mess up your juice.” Or whatever.

Uh-oh. Sarcasm again. I hated having all this attention on me.

“Where are you at, Clifford? You look way back up in there.”

It was Molly again. Like, wasn’t I allowed to feel shitty?

“I’m OK. Just, you know, tired.”

“You’re manifesting some negative energy and we’re trying to get you straight.”

“Well, yeah. I’m cool. Just not into the windshield thing right now.” Hell if I knew what she’d just said.

“What do you mean, ‘the windshield thing’? We’re putting good vibes out to the people.”

“Aw, cut loose, Molly. He told you he’s tired. He just got on the bus. Let’im crash.” It was Donald to the rescue. “Don’t be such an astral conservative.”

“Donald, if you’ve got subconscious with me…”

“I don’t. Now please don’t rip me off while I’m driving.” He seemed so calm.

There were some muttered agreements about the importance of protecting the driver’s energy and how we could sort it out later. I slunk back to the bottom bunk, drained. Janine sat there playing with a doll.

“Are you gonna sleep?”

“Yeah, Ni-ni. I need a nap.” She covered my arm with her doll’s blanket. I closed my eyes and the eyelid movies of the intermittent sunlight hitting my face combined with the swerving motion of the bus to add nausea to my condition. Now I’d probably start puking, to add to the curse of my presence. Hoo, boy, this was getting rough. Talk about your stranger in a strange land.

I remembered being in a similar place the summer of ‘67 when four friends and I had spent the summer hitching and train-hopping through Europe. Our language skills were rudimentary and we were almost fatally naive, but we had each other to trip with when everything around us was crazy. In the last weeks we split up with the rest going hither and yon and me going to Paris alone to retrieve the luggage we’d sent ahead. I was solo on the train in Germany and for a short while, I desperately missed having a companion.

Laying there n the bus, I realized that I’d begun to wonder if the one person I’d been relying on to be my friend and guide amongst strangers had committed to another man. Anita and…Donald?

The earth had shifted and I’d missed the clues. I probably had a load of that thing Molly’d called “subconscious.” Stephen had talked about it in his book, but I hadn’t picked up on its negative connotation. If you were bumming about anything, you must be carrying this dark stuff, and it bothers the hell out of people.

But in thinking of Europe, I thought of Lew, one of my most beloved friends and the source of redemptive laughter during so many of my awful times with family, politics, women, school, and life in general. Lew could instantly launch into a maniacal rail against God, fate and the foibles of humanity, purging the uptight from the situation. Somehow there was joy in his anger, even when it was topped off by a heartfelt “Goddamn Son-of-a BITCH!”

Lew showed me that things might really “SUCK the BIG ONE,” but the fact that you knew how bad they sucked gave you power over them. Comforted by the spirit of Lew, I found myself smiling and reached over to stroke Janine’s blonde locks.

“I feel better now, Ni-Ni.”

I returned quietly to join the bus family up front. Everyone seemed to have cut loose of the issue and we talked about what people were going to do once we arrived in San Francisco. Finally, hours later, the bus stopped swaying with the curves and we were rolling up a much flatter highway with sand dunes between us and the shoreline.

“Where are we?”

“We just left Monterey. We’re headed for Santa Cruz.” It was Anita, handing me a bowl of beans and brown rice with chopsticks.

“We gotta talk,” I told her.

“I know,” she said. “After we get to San Francisco and most of the people leave the bus.”

A feeling of dread. Relief delayed.

Three straight nights in Trailways bus seats had me jonesing for a night in any kind of a bed. Shades of Blue afforded me that accomodation, but with conditions. I shared the bottom forward bunk with Anita and the two girls. I was buzzed, trying to integrate all of the changes, trying to relax my brain after two hours of intense concentration on driving through fog, wondering what my relationship was with Anita, with this new culture, with Stephen, who’d led this rolling community of nomads around the country.

I lay on my back with the rhythmic sound of the surf providing a background to the snoring accents provided by my busmates. I dozed off in snatches, each time waking to realize that I really was in a converted school bus near the Pacific Ocean.

I wondered what my friends would think of this or how I would describe it. We’d been known in high school for our acerbic sense of humor, our cynicism about the world and our joyous celebration of the bullshit nature of life on Earth. I’d found no room for cynicism or even sarcasm on the bus. I’d made what, for me, was more of a wry observation than outright sarcasm and was instructed, “Stephen says sarcasm is anger and we ain’t into that. Anger is violence on the Subtle Plane.”

My friends would have had a field day with that. Yet none of them had a clue what they wanted to do with their lives, or more to the point, what they would be able to stand to do with their lives. They hadn’t ridiculed me when I told them I was off to join a nomadic tribe of longhairs. They couldn’t claim to have a better alternative for me or for them.

I wondered if I’d be able to find such good friends among this new group, here in California. Would I be able to change to be like these transformative people? Would I be able to restrain my skepticism, keep a lid on my sarcasm, and still enjoy life in this far out culture? And more immediately, what would happen after tomorrow, when the adventure known as the Caravan would come to an end?

The first light of day had just arrived when I heard the strange sound of metallic pounding and shouting. It repeated over and over, getting louder until I could understand the words.

“G’morning! Drivers’ meeting in a half hour.”

BONG_BONG_BONG! The vibrations went through the bus and a tall shape moved past the window. “Good morning!” came the loud baritone.

I watched as the gangly figure stepped to the bus next to us and pounded a mallet on its bumper. “Good morning!”

Donald had jumped out of bed and was pulling on his jeans.

“Wanna come to the meeting?”

“Yeah, sure!” I worked on disentangling myself from the arms and legs of my bunkmates.

Donald was heating water for tea on the stove. The rest of the bus family was stretching, yawning, greeting one another. The bus creaked as people moved about in the cramped interior.

“Mu or mint?” Donald asked. I chose mint.

We sat on the front platform and sipped or tea.

“So, what are your plans now that you’re out here?” he asked, looking me in the eyes.

I inhaled too fast and choked on the hot tea.

“Well, I guess I really don’t know. I just thought this was what I had to do. Come out here, I mean. I don’t know what happens next. What about you?”

“We’ll see. Life is a trip.” He smiled over his cup. “Let’s go to the meeting.”

It was chilly in the parking lot. Just beyond the pavement the ground dropped away. A hundred feet below was a rocky beach, surf crashing invisibly beyond the fog line. The bus drivers, I assumed, were flocking to a small group in the midst of which stood the tall gangling figure who’d been wielding the mallet. So this was Stephen.

I’d seen his photos, of course, in the book. But in person, the first people I thought of were Don Quixote and Confucius. He stood silently, watching as each person approached. His eyes locked with mine and he gave a nod of acknowledgement. I gave mine back.

We were about 40 or 50, standing in a bunch, hanging on the first words from Stephen’s mouth. He took a deep breath, held it and let it out through pursed lips.

“Good morning. I ain’t gonna say much this morning, it being our last day on the road. We’ve just about made the circuit, just about made it home. We’re gonna pull out in a half hour. Give us time, when we get to the city to figure out where we’re gonna go, where we’re gonna park. It’s been a trip, don’t ya think?” He laughed. I could imagine, yes, it had been quite a trip.

“So if any of you need gas money, see Peter. Drive careful on this windy coast road. Keep together and we’ll see you in front of the Family Dog.”

That was it. Someone yelled, “Stow and go!” and a flurry of activity began. Donald led me back through the maze of buses to Shades of Blue. By the time we got on board, the bus family was ready. This had become routine. Engines started up. Some hoods were thrown open then slammed shut on aging vehicles. Donald cranked up the straight six that powered our bus and waited for our place in line.

In late afternoon we joined the coastal highway - Highway One - and began following it north. I rested my head against the window and stared in disbelief at the spectacular scenery unfolding around bend after bend of steep hills and cliffs and rocky shoreline. Compared to the flat and sandy beaches of the east coast, this was dramatic and inspiring topography.

Joints had been passed around, and I’d taken enough more hits than I ever had, but it was the west-facing panorama that was really blowing my mind after 3 days of imprisonment in the Trailways cruiser. I couldn’t take my eyes from the scenery until darkness made it invisible.

An hour or so into that darkness, Donald called to me from the driver’s seat.

“Hey, Clifford. You can drive this thing, right? How about taking over for a while?”

Well, first of all, no one had called me “Clifford” since the last time I remembered my mother scolding me as a young lad. I’d been “Cliff” to most, and “Fig” to my closest friends. Being addressed by my full given name touched a nerve. But, as they’d explained, part of their way of seeing one another was to dispose of diminutive or cute nicknames, and return to the actual non-ego-enhanced names that we;d been given at birth. Part of the impetus for this policy, I gathered, was the proliferation of mythical pseudonyms that hippies had taken to celebrate their rebirth in new lifestyles. No one on the bus was going by the name “Rainbow” or “Earthworm,” thank God. But what could be wrong with “Cliff?”

My second internal reaction to Donald’s request was to think, “Whoa! Well, sure I drove this hulk on three occasions and hated every second of the experience. Why should I think I could drive it now, full of innocent human beings, in the dark, in the - what is that? Fog? …on a narrow and winding, unfamiliar road skirting what I knew were precipitous cliffs?”

For some reason, I responded, “Uh, sure, that would be cool.”

“Far out.”

We pulled over and I slipped into the seat with the huge steering wheel and 3-foot long shift lever. I double-clutched and slipped the bus into first gear. Ever-so-slowly, I merged back onto the road, accelerating slowly to avoid catastrophe. Finally, attaining a modest cruising speed I found my palms sweating as I realized just how thick the fog was and how short the range was of our headlights.

All I could see ahead were about 50-feet-worth of lane reflectors. Vehicles coming in the opposite direction were almost upon me by the time I detected the glow of their headlights cutting through. It was terrifying, but at the same time exciting because, looking into the mirror above, I could see that every Shades of Blue passenger was gathered close behind me, staring intently into that same foggy wall, willing us to stay in the lane and on the road and out of trouble. The strange feeling of being guided by a collective consciousness infused me, and my concentration began to feel all-powerful. Time stopped and all there was in the world was our collective attention and those few reflectors leading our way into a glowing circle of light.

Eventually a peripheral reflection caught someone’s eye. “There! Pull over!” I released the accelerator and coasted as our lights caught the faint colors of more bus bodies in a roadside parking area. Forcing a noisy downshift, I trundled the bus off the highway and illuminated the resting herd of the Caravan. We were near San Luis Obispo, and the tension was suddenly released. I would spend this first night as a wayward vagabond, on the opposite coast from my home.